Advances in the construction and application of oral bacterial delivery vehicles
ZHENG De-yuan
ZHU Zhi-peng
SHI Yi-long
WU Jin-hui
Abstract：Orally delivered engineered bacteria hold significant promise for treating conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease,intestinal infections,cancer,and metabolic disorders.Compared to administration routes such as injection,oral delivery offers enhanced simplicity,improved patient compliance,and a lower risk of systemic infection.However,multiple physiological barriers-including gastric acid,bile salts,digestive enzymes,and the mucus layer-often lead to substantial loss of bacterial viability before reaching the target site.Recent advances in synthetic biology and material surface engineering have provided new strategies to overcome these challenges.This review systematically summarizes the design strategies for oral bacterial delivery systems,focusing primarily on genetic engineering and surface modification,and discusses their representative applications along with in vivo therapeutic validations.We conclude that the integration of genetic circuit regulation and functional surface modification can synergistically enhance colonization capacity,targeting precision,and treatment safety of engineered bacteria in the complex gut environment,representing a core direction for advancing oral bacterial therapeutics.Future efforts should focus on developing more intelligent genetic circuits and more precise surface functionalization strategies,alongside rigorous validation of their safety and efficacy in clinical translation,to expedite the real-world application of these living therapeutics.
Keywords：oral deliverybacterial vectorgenetically engineered bacteriasurface-modified bacteria
Publication Date：2026-02-15
Online Publishing Date：2026-08-14(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：11( 285-295 )